Friday, November 11, 2011

My Own Short History Of Time

Due to the actual date - the 11th of November, 2011 - I‘ve decided to reflect a bit about time itself in these times full of revolutions, uprisings, indignations, occupations and a general global change we all can feel.

First of all I like to note that we are orientating ourselves in this case on the Gregorian calendar. Therefore any kind of general statement to the relevance of this date cannot be forwarded as universally valid. The fact that the calculation of times the three monotheistic religions are using vary in a total duration of 4.330 years should illustrate us the relativity of the date itself.

So how long you believe is exactly one day? 24 hours? That is right if you don‘t leave your time zone. But globally seen this 11th of November began somewhere in the Pacific - and will end in the Pacific. If you are able to travel from Eastern Siberia near the Bering Strait to Honululu your date-related day will effectively last 45 hours. Otherwise said: When this 11th of November begins for the Hawaiians the Kamchatkans have only three hours left of it.

With an airplane you are able to eliminate one complete day. All you have to do is cross the international dateline westwards in the moment for example the 10th of November ends suddenly being in the beginning of the 12th of November. If you‘ll stay then in this time zone until the end of your life becoming a New Zealander mathematically seen you‘ve existed one whole day less than you‘ve lived.

Confused? Wonderful, that was exactly my purpose to demonstrate the relativity of time in comparison to life itself which doesn‘t pretend to follow our imagination at all. While our definition of time is only an implement construction to coordinate our interactions life is able to surprise us in both a positive and a negative way in reference to our expectations. How many ,magical dates‘ we have performed only in this Gregorian year 2011? I believe more than ever before. Those dates can be divided into three categories:

Category (A) contains the dates where the expectations are fulfilled, f. ex. the revolution dates in the Arab Spring like Jan 25 in Egypt, Feb 17 in Libya or Mar 15 in Syria. Those dates were kind of shouted out through the actions taking place from that moment on. The chosen examples may have been inspired through unpredicted incidents but with the help of the black swan theory we are able to see them as expected.

Category (B) includes all kind of dates which expectations aren‘t fulfilled as predicted. Examples for that we find in the younger history especially among the foretold apocalypses. (The plural form of this term is a wonderful oxymoron, the world can simply perish once; only our imagination of it is able to go repeatedly down.) Fact is we are still here and tomorrow is another day the sun will rise.

Category (C) stands for all the dates which occured events simply happen without being expected or predicted. To quote one or more examples is at first sight impossible because nearly everything what happens around us fits here in.

Now which category might contain the most dates? The answer on it you‘ll have to give to yourselves. I do not know it. I only have an idea of it.

Tempus fugit - amor manet.
And please don't take my post too serious. Today is also the beginning of the carnival in the culture area I'm living - exactly at 11:11am CET ..

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